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After The War posted:The Doctor never switched the TARDIS film library to VHS, and he made the right decision. Why would he switch a film library onto video? 
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Apr 7, 2015 15:38
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Trin Tragula posted:Why would he switch a film library onto video? K-9 did double duty as projector. Without him, it's all on Beta: films, lost television episodes, Prydonian training video outtakes, it's all there .o
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Apr 7, 2015 16:00
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CobiWann posted:How are the two Unbound audios with David Warner? Sympathy for the Devil was really good, in my opinion. You'll probably be able to predict some of the twists, but it's just well-written and well-acted (and it's got David Tennant in a role that's pretty good for him). I haven't heard Master of War yet, but I'll likely get to it sometime early next week. In general, except for the one nobody should ever speak of, the Unbound line is among Big Finish's best Doctor Who stories, and I'm including the main line.
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Apr 7, 2015 17:36
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CobiWann posted:How are the two Unbound audios with David Warner? Sympathy for the Devil is absolutely top-notch. Masters of War isn't bad but it goes on way too long and most of it's pretty sloppy
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Apr 7, 2015 17:44
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Fil5000 posted:Yes, this is entirely fair. I find it hard to dislike much from McCoy's run as he was MY Doctor, but even with that in mind I agree that a lot of the grief Battlefield gets is perhaps a bit unfair. You get the Brig, you get Bessie, you get the Brig standing off against a nigh immortal beastie with his revolver (twice) and you get an extra Brigadier played by the female Dave Lister. Also it isn't Silver Nemesis, which surely is worth a lot of points. The last two McCoy seasons are two of the strongest in the entire history of the series. Those two seasons have "Remembrance", "The Happiness Patrol", "The Greatest Show In the Galaxy", "Ghost Light", "The Curse of Fenric" and "Survival". Although I think it has flaws, I feel that "Battlefield" is a pretty good serial; "Silver Nemesis" is the only one that isn't entirely up to scratch but, with the exception of "Paradise Towers", it's better than most of season 24. Edit: Also, I never realised that Bambera was played by the female Dave Lister. I feel like I should have done. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 20:02
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Wheat Loaf posted:Edit: Also, I never realised that Bambera was played by the female Dave Lister. I feel like I should have done. Shame. *entire audience cringes* *Keff McCulloch sits on his keyboard again* *Sophie Aldred nearly crippled again*
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Apr 7, 2015 22:03
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Survival is one of the dumbest serials I've ever watched. I saw it alone in my house and still felt embarrassed.
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Apr 7, 2015 22:22
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Survival is one of the dumbest serials I've ever watched. I saw it alone in my house and still felt embarrassed. I like it.
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Apr 7, 2015 22:24
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Trin Tragula posted:Shame. They should have had her saying "smeg" instead.
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Apr 7, 2015 22:25
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http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-04-05/steven-moffat-doctor-who-will-last-at-least-another-five-years Spot the problem with the quote from the BBC bod at the end there?
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Apr 7, 2015 22:30
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Wheat Loaf posted:The last two McCoy seasons are two of the strongest in the entire history of the series. Those two seasons have "Remembrance", "The Happiness Patrol", "The Greatest Show In the Galaxy", "Ghost Light", "The Curse of Fenric" and "Survival". Although I think it has flaws, I feel that "Battlefield" is a pretty good serial; "Silver Nemesis" is the only one that isn't entirely up to scratch but, with the exception of "Paradise Towers", it's better than most of season 24. The only really BAD episode of McCoy's tenure is probably Time and the Rani. Everything else is at worth a watch, I think, either because Ace is great (Dragonfire) or because it's only three episodes long (Silver Nemesis).
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Apr 7, 2015 22:38
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The woefully out-of-date picture on the button at the bottom? "Maybe we should take Jon Pertwee off the promotional materials, give that Davison bloke a chance."
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Apr 7, 2015 22:40
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After The War posted:The woefully out-of-date picture on the button at the bottom? "Hold on, I thought that Mark Gatiss chap was the Doctor now..."
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Apr 7, 2015 23:50
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It annoys me when TennantDoc is the de facto image of the show in anything fans put together, but doing it on an official BBC page drives me spare. "The good era ended six years ago folks, pity about the guys who came after..." Rant over. Maybe.
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Apr 8, 2015 02:23
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Survival is decent, but it really could have been so much better if they had done things with a little light makeup and movement/dance work, like the writer envisioned, instead of putting everyone in the big furry suits.
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Apr 8, 2015 02:27
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I like how Survival anticipates the new show in its run down setting and the allegory of everyone being so desperate that they become feral. Also the ep. 2 cliffhanger is pretty dang cool.
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Apr 8, 2015 03:13
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Neil Gaiman's collection of short stories, Trigger Warning, includes an Eleventh Doctor adventure which I found pretty solid and is also amusing because Rory (temporarily) dies in it again.
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Apr 8, 2015 03:36
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 Circular Time is a weird audio, telling stories that I'm not entirely sure actually happened. Split into four episodes, each episode covers one particular season of the year, but all cover a similar theme - legacy. A self-exiled Time Lord wants to shape a society and "civilize" them with himself as their spiritual/judicial/philisophical leader; a troubled genius fears for his own personal legacy as well as that of the Empire he loves; a rough round the edges sportsman desperately hopes for personal glory to justify a life's dedication, while Nyssa attempts to put onto words some lasting record of her own people/life story; and finally the Doctor himself is faced with a choice on the kind of life he wants to lead, and how he will meet his own doom. The 4-season/episode format may be exploring a similar theme throughout the entire audio, but by its very nature it makes it feel fractured, with stories mostly getting no time to breathe or properly develop. This is somewhat appropriate in that the notion of circular vs linear time comes up frequently, and this is a story that is not linear, each "season" taking place at a different point in the Doctor's life, though the first three appear to be set firmly in the period between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity when the Doctor and Nyssa were traveling alone together. I say appear, because given the nature of the 4th "season", I'm not entirely certain the first three seasons actually took place at all, it's possible they were products of the Doctor's mind, a way of dealing with his own fears about his legacy, his future (and his past) and the conflicting desires inside him between a continued life of travel or finally getting to settle down. If that is the case, I'd call Circular Time a rather interesting if not entirely successful rumination on the Davison era, if not then it's a makeshift feeling audio throwing four small scripts into the pot in order to pad out running time. In "Spring", the Doctor takes Nyssa to a planet occupied by an Avian race, on a mission for the Time Lords to speak with a self-exiled Time Lord who they fear intends to openly interfere with the development of that race. They walk right into an example of the rough justice meted out by the Avians - punishment is handing out not to the guilty but to their loved ones, since this is considered a more effective deterrent to crime. This is hardly without its problems though, particularly for more grievous crimes like murder, where the punishment is the execution of the closest relative to the guilty party. The Doctor of course is not entirely happy about this, but he tries to keep his mouth shut about it while Nyssa goes nuts about it, considering it barbaric (the Doctor reminds her that Traken wasn't without its own cruel punishments despite being "paradise"), and she's far from the only one. The Time Lord they've come seeking is Cardinal Zero, who has supposedly embraced the lifestyle of the Avians and "gone native", though the Doctor quickly sees through that pretense, figuring out that Zero did not scuttle his TARDIS at all but merely disguised it as the nearby lake (the ENTIRE lake). He faked it so the Avians would accept him, and with his superior knowledge he quickly became considered the spiritual leader of the people, though he remains subject to all their laws and traditions - that he has done so willingly has brought him great esteem, while they look on the Doctor with suspicion. Zero's intent is entirely self-serving, though he pitches it as altruistic and well-meaning, he intends to elevate the Avians into a starfaring society, to give them back the "flight" they so desire... and to fundamentally change their society to fit in with HIS concept of how they shall be. Paying lipservice to respect for their traditions, he organizes a painfully simple ruse to frame the Doctor for his murder, regenerating into an Avian form of him own and running the Doctor and Nyssa off by using the law against them - he accepts the blame for his murder and admits it was a "suicide", and since the Doctor is the closest thing he has to a relative, the Doctor is the one who must be punished. The Doctor, making an odd comment about having anticipated all this and gone along somewhat willingly, escapes with Nyssa, and since it is not impossible to punish the crime under the law of the Avians, Zero declares there must be a rewriting of the law so that from now on the guilty are punished and not their relatives, making a point of smugly declaring an amnesty for himself. This is a story where the bad guy "wins", everything goes his way, and as the set-up for the next three episodes exploring how he changes Avian society and how eventually he faces his comeuppance, it was good set-up.... but the story never continues, it simply ends. More troubling is the Doctor's implication that he was a willing (if uninformed) party to the whole thing, guessing Zero's plans and going along with it. While there is no doubt that the Avian's system of justice seemed barbaric (one of the victims of the system begs the Doctor to do something to end it), the smug and self-serving way Zero accomplishes his task feels very wrong, and I am disappointed the story wasn't continued (unless it was, and it crops up in another Big Finish down the road). In "Summer", the Doctor and Nyssa get thrown into jail when the Doctor's absentmindedness causes them to be accused of forgery by Sir Isaac Newton himself. Newton is voiced by David Warner, so that's pretty much all the recommendation most people need to justify a purchase, and he certainly steals the show, the saving grace of this particular episode which doesn't have much else going for it. The coins that the Doctor gave Nyssa were a handful of currencies from different eras in Earth history (and at least one alien one I think) and they immediately grab Newton's attention because many of the details in them suggest some kind of subtle political plot on the Doctor's behalf. Once he gets a closer look at them he notices the workmanship that is beyond anything "his" Royal Mint is capable of, and from there he furthers ends up deducing any manner of things, not least of which being that the Doctor is a time traveler. The Doctor and Nyssa mostly stand around as he rants and raves and then goes into near-catatonic states as he works through the details of the coins and the ramifications they have on the future of the Empire, as well as his own personal legacy. A genius who "discovered" gravity (there is a quick reference to an old 4th Doctor joke thrown in), completely overhauled the Royal Mint, and developed (concurrently with another mathematician) Calculus, Newton was also obsessed with alchemy to the point of distraction, seeking to create the holy grail of alchemy - the Philosopher's Stone, the key to immortality. Though he quickly discards the idea that the Doctor is a fellow alchemist (for the more fantastical idea that he is a time traveler) it is clear that his mortality is much on his mind - when by deduction he mostly correctly guesses the future course of human events from the coins he took from the Doctor and Nyssa, he is alarmed to realize that the British Empire will not last, and that his own name is likely to be forgotten in the aftermath of an alien invasion in the 22nd Century (The Dalek Invasion of Earth). The Doctor can't offer any assurances in that regard, only commiseration that this is "all" he gets - the Doctor is very much a fan of Newton's, to a fault perhaps as he skims over some of the man's darker tendencies. Upon being given their freedom, they leave Newton behind with his obsessions and his fear of mortality, a theme that runs through the entire audio - but as a standalone episode, it feels oddly detached from everything else. This is more a delivery mechanism for a wonderful performance by David Warner.... not that there's anything wrong with that. In "Autumn", the Doctor travels to a little town called Stockbridge in Hampshire, where he has a tradition of showing up to join the local cricket team for the tail end of their season. It is his holiday, a chance to revel in "linear time" in a way usually foreign to him. While he plays cricket, Nyssa attempts to write a novel, to put down in words her memory of Traken, which exists now only in her memory. Unfortunately for the Doctor, linear time means things have a habit of changing, and he discovers that the local cricket team isn't full of "worthy" gentlemen anymore, but louts and hard drinkers lead by Don, a ex-professional whose obsession with his own legacy means he is determined to keep the team from being relegated down a division in their local competition. While the Doctor puts up with their casual racism, heavy drinking, and insults towards his mild manners, Nyssa is increasingly distracted and agitated by the attentions of a local waiter/university student named Andrew. At first he seems quite rude, questioning the point of writing a novel without an antagonist, but as the days pass it becomes clearer to her that his interest in her is genuine. He takes her to see "Traken", believing it to be her home village, and pushes for a romantic relationship while Nyssa resists, having everything about her life planned out and struggling to deal with Andrew's insistence that she just go with the flow and see what happens. Everything culminates on the day of the final game, as Don (with the Doctor's aid) pushes himself past his limits to win the game and secure the team's place in the division, while Nyssa uses Andrew as inspiration to finish her book and excise some of her own demons by getting out the sheer horror and grief and frustration of seeing her home planet destroyed AND the knowledge that the man who killed her father is gleefully running around inside of his body somewhere out there in the universe. It's a bittersweet ending in keeping with the season, the Doctor and Nyssa have put off change as long as they can, and though both achieve their goals and secure their legacy, both also know that nothing will be the same, and that there is something hollow in the accomplishment. "Autumn" feels like an intermission, the quiet before the storm, nothing really happens in it, which is kind of the point - the Doctor plays cricket, Nyssa writes and develops her relationship with Andrew, and then when they both get what they think they wanted, they move on from this brief interlude in their lives and leave behind the quiet existence of linear time. In "Winter", everything is a massive change, and the events of this story are what make me question whether the previous three actually happened at all or were all an illusion/inside the mind of the Doctor. The first sees him go up against Cardinal Zero, a warped reflection of himself - the interfering Time Lord who ends tyranny and injustice. The second sees him meet a great hero of his and get a chance to speak with him and reveal something of his legacy to him. The third shows him that the peaceful existence he would like to enjoy is superficial and soon to fade, like the leaves on the trees. In the fourth story, we find the Fifth Doctor an old man living with his loving wife in a small farm in the middle of a blizzard, worried about the noise in the barn where he keeps his coffin, and more worried still about his sleeping children Adric and Tegan upstairs. Nyssa is older too, but not as old as the Doctor, living with her husband having eventually cured the sick at Terminus and being able at last to move on with her life and find the stability she has been seeking. But Nyssa has been having bad dreams, and when she uses her husband's invention to explore that dream, she discovers the Doctor who insists to her that HE is the one dreaming, and that she is a figment of his subconscious and nothing more. There is something surreal about the place, which is only suitable for a "dream", and when Nyssa's husband joins her in the dream they discover that none of them can get out of it. This causes the Doctor to face up to reality, and after a short but vehement protest that this is all he has ever wanted.... he almost immediately shrugs it off, acknowledges that they're clearly in some kind of illusion, and expresses surprise that he fell for it for even the briefest of seconds. The Doctor rejects an existence in linear time, and from the moment he does, he knows everything that is happening, the memories flooding back to him. Without giving too much away, it's a story that ties into issues from the Pertwee and Tom Baker eras as well as his own - the Doctor realizes where he is, what is happening, what the "thing" in the barn is, and who put them all in here in the first place. Saying a final fond farewell to Nyssa, who was the first face his face ever saw, he accepts his fate and walks gladly into it. I said at the beginning of this write-up that this was an audio about legacy, but I think after writing all this I got that wrong. This is really a story about change, about the fear of it, the need for it, the unfairness of it all AND the inevitability of it. The Avian society could never advance itself under the brutal surrogate system of justice it used, and so Zero changed it by changing himself. Sir Isaac Newton wanted not only to be remembered forever but to LIVE forever, and he thought the British Empire would do so as well - instead he learns that change is coming, that he will die, that the Empire will break-up and breakdown, and that within a few centuries the Earth itself will be conquered by an alien race. The Doctor finds the comfortable pair of socks that was his local cricket team has changed, that time has moved on without him and even the timeless game of cricket has changed. Nyssa works through the impact that the forced change in her life has had on her, and through her relationship with Andrew she changes further, a change that helps her to make the decision to eventually remain on Terminus, which is turn leads to the happy life she is living at the time of "Winter". And finally in that story, the Doctor is offered a false stasis, an unchanging reality he can hide in, a way to be truly happy and content and settle down, to have a family again for the first time in centuries... all he has to do is give up, to submit and accept it. Instead, the Doctor chooses change, and it comes not a moment too soon. Circular Time was written by Paul Cornell and Mike Maddox. I'm not familiar with the latter, but the former is generally pretty drat good, and the story the two tell here is laudable if only for trying something pretty drat different from the norm. I don't know if the story was always intended to be this way or if Big Finish just threw a handful of small scripts together and asked one or both writers to tie them together somehow, but I like to believe it was the former. In that regard, this story takes an interesting look back at the 5th Doctor's time, and ties it in nicely with themes that were first introduced during Jon Pertwee's time, and were closely associated with the end of Tom Baker's era and the beginning of Davison's own. It does get a little continuity-heavy towards the end, but I imagine there are very few people listening to Big Finish Doctor Who audios who aren't intimately familiar with the continuity references anyway. This story is certainly worth a listen, even if it isn't entirely successful at doing what it seems to be trying to do, you have to applaud the effort.
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Apr 8, 2015 05:06
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Stockbridge appeared a few times in the 5th Doctor DWM comics, and latterly the 8th Doctor, as comics companion Izzy was from there too. http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Stockbridge
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Apr 8, 2015 05:12
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CobiWann posted:"Hold on, I thought that Mark Gatiss chap was the Doctor now..." No joke; I was listening to the radio in the run-up to the 50th anniversary and everyone on whatever show it was (something on Radio 2, I think) seemed to think Russell T Davies was still the head writer. 
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Apr 8, 2015 09:54
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The_Doctor posted:Stockbridge appeared a few times in the 5th Doctor DWM comics, and latterly the 8th Doctor, as comics companion Izzy was from there too. Also in a trilogy of audios starring Davison and Sutton. With Mark Williams as Maxwell Edison in one!
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Apr 8, 2015 10:07
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Maxwell Lord posted:Also the ep. 2 cliffhanger is pretty dang cool. https://youtu.be/BVAUYhmOK-0?t=8m00s Once again, sod Murray Gold.
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Apr 8, 2015 10:17
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I like Murray Gold when he doesn't have RTD poking him with a stick shouting MORE DRAMATIC, even if he does lean a bit too much on the main leitmotifs.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Apr 8, 2015 |
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Apr 8, 2015 10:21
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Wheat Loaf posted:No joke; I was listening to the radio in the run-up to the 50th anniversary and everyone on whatever show it was (something on Radio 2, I think) seemed to think Russell T Davies was still the head writer. Well to be fair, RTD casts a long shadow, what with literally being a giant and all.
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Apr 8, 2015 10:26
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Jerusalem posted:Well to be fair, RTD casts a long shadow, what with literally being a giant and all. Giants, dragons...what other mystical creatures come from Wales?
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Apr 8, 2015 10:32
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CobiWann posted:Giants, dragons...what other mystical creatures come from Wales? The Legendary Killer Leek.
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Apr 8, 2015 11:01
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The article linked underneath is pretty fun, and a lot of it is stuff I haven't heard yet.Radio Times posted:Legendarily fierce Blue Peter editor Biddy Baxter initially refused to allow Sophie Aldred’s Ace to wear a BP badge on her bomber jacket, insisting such a privilege had to be earned. A production secretary was duly dispatched to check the badge’s provenance, and was able to confirm that, in 1970, it had been won fairly and squarely by 11-year-old Sophie Aldred, of Blackheath, for her brilliant design for a rocket launcher built using a washing-up liquid bottle and a length of garden hose. They should probably have put her in charge of the special effects as well. 
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Apr 8, 2015 13:57
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Circular Time is one of my favorites, if only because about half of the stories are really, really well done.
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Apr 8, 2015 14:13
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What are some good Seven audios other than Colditz? I want to explore him more, he's a devilish manipulator.
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Apr 8, 2015 14:40
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computer parts posted:What are some good Seven audios other than Colditz? I want to explore him more, he's a devilish manipulator. The Harvest, Night Thoughts, Frozen Time, and if you liked Colditz, A Thousand Tiny Wings.
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Apr 8, 2015 14:55
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CobiWann posted:The Harvest, Night Thoughts, Frozen Time, and if you liked Colditz, A Thousand Tiny Wings. And let's not forget UNIT: Dominion.
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Apr 8, 2015 15:06
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And if you like a Thousand Tiny Wings, it would be criminal not to continue with its followup episodes: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST & THE ARCHITECTS OF HISTORY. Edit: Chronologically UNIT: DOMINION would go after them. On Mastermind front, LIVE 34 and RED are very good 7th Doctor stories. Issaries fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Apr 8, 2015 |
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Apr 8, 2015 15:06
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adhuin posted:On Mastermind front, LIVE 34 and RRRRRRED are very good 7th Doctor stories. Fixed that for you. The latter day Seven/Hex/Ace audios (specifically the Black and White TARDIS ones) are also an interesting take on the Mastermind theme, since Seven gets completely played by the gods, without even realising it - thinking he's the one doing the playing, even.
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Apr 8, 2015 15:15
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computer parts posted:What are some good Seven audios other than Colditz? I want to explore him more, he's a devilish manipulator. I just finished The Dark Husband the other day, and it works pretty well as a comedic Seven/Ace/Hex story where they keep trying to figure out what his masterplan is. It's pretty much Doctor Who does Red Dwarf - Hex is essentially Dave Lister through most of it. The Harvest has already been mentioned (even if I think it chickened out of the moral questions it raised by making it a run of the mill invasion story), mostly liked the two back-to-back historicals The Settling and No Man's Land and can't extoll enough how thoroughly I enjoyed Unregenerate! Not a lot of chessmaster stuff in any of those, though.
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Apr 8, 2015 15:33
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I remember peace out-ing about halfway through episode 2 of The Dark Husband because it was just so tedious and dull.
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Apr 8, 2015 15:52
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I just started watching classic Who using suggestions in the first post. 100,000 BC was OK but dragged on The Mutants (not suggested) had way too much padding with leaving the city/going back/etc. Tomb of the Cybermen was excellent except for silly looking and difficult to understand Cybermen, I like Two a lot Spearhead from Space not bad, but apparently no Tardis adventures = what's the point. Three is good though. Robots of Death was surprisingly good, I would say intriguing more than scary. Four was fun. "Jelly Babies?" made me LOL. City of Death (not suggested but everyone was recommending it recently) Well executed, especially with Glover being in all time streams at once. Kinda I hate Adric too, almost to the point where I'd avoid any episode with him. Celery stick distracting. So favorite Doctors so far would be Two and Four respectively. Best companion is obviously Romana. Any suggestions on what to watch next? monster on a stick fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Apr 8, 2015 |
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Apr 8, 2015 16:03
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CobiWann posted:A Thousand Tiny Wings. Which is currently on iPlayer
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Apr 8, 2015 16:05
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monster on a stick posted:I just started watching classic Who using suggestions in the first post.
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Apr 8, 2015 16:08
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Doctor Spaceman posted:If you want more Four, Genesis of the Daleks or Ark in Space? I guess I would say, Four seemed to have the best stories, though I only watched one Two which was also good. So both, and maybe similar good stories for Six/Seven?
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Apr 8, 2015 16:12
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You might as well watch Ark In Space, Sontaran Experiment and Genesis. They form a fairly nice bridge.
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